I am likely older than a lot of you, perhaps younger than others but I want to talk about something that often happens to me and mostly I try to avoid it now.
We all have fond memories of something we saw or did a long time ago and I think this is very evident in things like TV shows or movies. You have such incredible experiences in your memory banks even though you maybe only have a snapshot of them that you can actually see in your mind.
I liked a ton of shows back in the 80's but there were several that really stood out to me (in my mind) as being exceptionally good and one of those was The Incredible Hulk.
Superhero stuff is a dime a dozen these days but back in the 80's there wasn't a lot of that going on because CGI didn't exist and most attempts to show super-powers on a screen resulted in things that looked really silly. Just have a bit of a glance at the original Superman films for a taste.
The Incredible Hulk was a TV sensation even though we didn't really have anything to compare it to. Because they couldn't really do any computer graphics, all of the things they did had to be practical effects. They also had to find a real life human that looked superhuman and that person was Lou Ferigno
because this show couldn't have cars flying around all the time the show instead focused on the emotional aspects of David Banner's life and that part of the show I had fond memories of. Each episode was pretty predictable because David would constantly find himself in frustrating situations that would eventually make him mad enough to transition into the Hulk. It was always going to happen about 70% of the way through an episode.
Most of the story focused on David and they went for an emotional edge rather than one of fast paced action. That is not what Hulk is like these days. Sheesh, I watched a bit of the new Spiderman movie and Hulk is just as absurd as ever!
Anyway, it sounds like I am singing the praises of this nearly 50 year old show but unfortunately the images and memories I have in my head is where I should have left this series. As you would expect, this show is absolutely dreadful by today's standards and I think part of the reason why it was so popular at the time was because we didn't have anything to compare it to. In the late 70's very few people attempted things like this because the end result had so many opportunities to look just ridiculous.
I kind of ruined my memories of this show by going back to watch it and I can only recommend that you do so if you have never seen it before and would like to see what the entertainment world attempted to do almost 50 years ago when it came to superheros. Let's just say that there is a reason why comic books were still the most popular method of getting superhero entertainment in your lives back then. The alternative was just kind of cheap looking no matter how much money they sunk into it.
Have a look at that show intro and just revel in the extremely 70's nature of it all. Amazing. Then leave it at that. There really isn't any reason to watch this show and most people will get bored. In my situation I destroyed some wonderful childhood memories by attempting to go back and relive them. I'll think twice about doing that in the future.
If you want to prove me correct you can stream this for free on Tubi plus you can find entire episodes on YouTube sometimes divided up into small portions. I guess the owners just don't care about the copyright anymore. 8 minutes is probably about all the average person is going to be able to tolerate so that is a good-sized length for it to be.
